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"raging anti-intellectualism of engineers" What makes you think engineers are anti-intellectual? Engineering is an intellectual discipline, after all.

lazide 5y ago
I suspect the poster is referring to anti the type of Intellectualism which is pure theory (or similar) and not application focused. Which I'd agree with - most Engineers tend to hate that kind of thing.
mananaysiempre 5y ago
> What makes you think engineers are anti-intellectual? FWIW, I’ve encountered the thing I call anti-intellectualism here among experimental physicists as well, and even in some theorists and mathematicians as well, to varying degrees. I don’t mean being stupid or not using your brain for work; I’m sure some of the people I’m thinking of here are much smarter than me and/or have contributed much more to society than I ever will. I’m not thinking of all engineering or science people, either; the maths teacher I had in high school is perhaps the strongest counterexample of this stereotype I know. What I mean is a certain lack of wonder and ... suspension of disbelief(?) when it comes to other kinds of intellectual pursuits (sciences, arts, humanities, philosophy, mathematics), like a feeling you’re doing Real Work while those other quacks do pointless things to amuse themselves, and are not even particularly successful at that. “Shut up and calculate”, if brought out among people who are past the basic level of understanding of the subject in question, is a manifestation of this (even though the originator of the saying in the context of quantum mechanics, David Mermin, is now a proponent of the “quantum Bayesianism” school of philosophical thought). Lest it seem that I’m dunking on physicists here, the “Two cultures” essay and Hardy’s “Apology” also contain some of this. If you’ve read the book, the shortest definition is perhaps to say that my “anti-intellectualism” is the opposite of The Glass Bead Game, even if Hesse intended it as his anti-Enligtenment manifesto. And I cannot say this sort of skepticism is always wrong—that way lies Fashionable Nonsense and New Age mysticism, and epistemic relativism scares me like little else. We do owe some advances in quantum foundations to New Age people, though, so sneering in that direction might not be right either. (If you think that this anti-intellectualism thing and the negation of the hacker spirit seem remarkably similar, you’re getting it.)
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  That sounds more like intellectual snobbery and scientism rather than anti-intellectualism. This is especially evident towards fields one knows little about, towards the so-called "soft sciences" and the humanities.
  - mananaysiempre 5y ago
    ... And also towards fields that are very close, like the famous characterization of the appearance of group theory in particle physics as Gruppenpest. (Lev Landau was perhaps the last of the physics greats to share this view, but he still made it live on as the absence of a standard group theory course in physics curricula throughout the ex-USSR. Of course, the problem is not that Landau was somehow especially shortsighted, but that keeping a university curriculum essentially unchanged for half a century is stupid and that a single school of theorists, however mighty, should not be able to dictate the course of a field in the whole country.) I know the term scientism came to be used as a pejorative in humanities discourse and consequently in journalism, but I’d prefer not to use it here, both because of the contemptuous connotation and because it was originally coined to mean something much more interesting: a counterpoint to a naive, maximalist sort of positivism, of attempts to dismiss any picture of how the world actually is as unverifiable and therefore the question itself as meaningless. (This is the pop culture impression of Popper, though AFAIU Popper realized the problem and said far more nuanced things than that.) The argument went along the lines of, “if talking about the ‘real world’ is meaningless and science is exclusively about experiments in labs, then it sure is peculiar that those experiments appear to be so remarkably coherent, even with things outside of labs—almost as though there actually is something worth calling the ‘real world’ and that science is in fact about that thing?” Thus, scientism. (Cf. Liberalism Unrelinquished[1] on a similar issue of terminology.) [1] http://liberalismunrelinquished.net/ http://liberalismunrelinquished.net/
    - dr_dshiv 5y ago
      I disagree. Popper introduced the idea of scientism in a manner that comports with how it is used here.
kelseyfrog 5y ago
It's easy to find them. Let us call them out using the siren song. Psychology and sociology are just as much sciences as mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, and biology.
somewhereoutth 5y ago
"Engineers! Too dull to be artists, too stupid to be scientists."
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  And yet they know the difference between theory and practice.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    In theory, there is no difference;in practice there is.
eternityforest 5y ago
I think antifragile theory is needed to really understand anti-intellectualism. Engineers love to convince themselves that older and simpler is always better. So, you might have someone who can solve a differential equation, but seriously looks down on anyone with an Alexa, and thinks we will never be able to transition to all electric cars cleanly with future tech. They are sometimes biased toward their senses much more than numbers. An engineer could totally still say "Metal is always better than cheap plastic crap" and make a power drill with a solid steel case or something. The technical analysis only matters if you actually do it. They can do tech on a personal level but they don't trust the large scale process of technical improvement. The other commenter mentioned disregard for the humanities and I think they are related. "My intelligence is more valuable than your education" is a common belief. People seem to see life and work not as a series of projects, but like a sport, where the goal is to test yourself in a pure way, without "cheating". The humanities often don't have objective success criteria, they are seen as nonessential, and often have lower barrier to entry(Some people can learn to draw from zero in a few weeks, math takes months to years before you can do anything you can't do with an app). These people judge value by amount of challenge. It just doesn't fit the "Living off the land, surviving on your own skill, being practical instead of academic, trusting your eyes not math" kind of paradigm as well.

lazide 5y ago

I suspect the poster is referring to anti the type of Intellectualism which is pure theory (or similar) and not application focused. Which I'd agree with - most Engineers tend to hate that kind of thing.

mananaysiempre 5y ago

> What makes you think engineers are anti-intellectual? FWIW, I’ve encountered the thing I call anti-intellectualism here among experimental physicists as well, and even in some theorists and mathematicians as well, to varying degrees. I don’t mean being stupid or not using your brain for work; I’m sure some of the people I’m thinking of here are much smarter than me and/or have contributed much more to society than I ever will. I’m not thinking of all engineering or science people, either; the maths teacher I had in high school is perhaps the strongest counterexample of this stereotype I know. What I mean is a certain lack of wonder and ... suspension of disbelief(?) when it comes to other kinds of intellectual pursuits (sciences, arts, humanities, philosophy, mathematics), like a feeling you’re doing Real Work while those other quacks do pointless things to amuse themselves, and are not even particularly successful at that. “Shut up and calculate”, if brought out among people who are past the basic level of understanding of the subject in question, is a manifestation of this (even though the originator of the saying in the context of quantum mechanics, David Mermin, is now a proponent of the “quantum Bayesianism” school of philosophical thought). Lest it seem that I’m dunking on physicists here, the “Two cultures” essay and Hardy’s “Apology” also contain some of this. If you’ve read the book, the shortest definition is perhaps to say that my “anti-intellectualism” is the opposite of The Glass Bead Game, even if Hesse intended it as his anti-Enligtenment manifesto. And I cannot say this sort of skepticism is always wrong—that way lies Fashionable Nonsense and New Age mysticism, and epistemic relativism scares me like little else. We do owe some advances in quantum foundations to New Age people, though, so sneering in that direction might not be right either. (If you think that this anti-intellectualism thing and the negation of the hacker spirit seem remarkably similar, you’re getting it.)

pmoriarty 5y ago
That sounds more like intellectual snobbery and scientism rather than anti-intellectualism. This is especially evident towards fields one knows little about, towards the so-called "soft sciences" and the humanities.
- mananaysiempre 5y ago
  ... And also towards fields that are very close, like the famous characterization of the appearance of group theory in particle physics as Gruppenpest. (Lev Landau was perhaps the last of the physics greats to share this view, but he still made it live on as the absence of a standard group theory course in physics curricula throughout the ex-USSR. Of course, the problem is not that Landau was somehow especially shortsighted, but that keeping a university curriculum essentially unchanged for half a century is stupid and that a single school of theorists, however mighty, should not be able to dictate the course of a field in the whole country.) I know the term scientism came to be used as a pejorative in humanities discourse and consequently in journalism, but I’d prefer not to use it here, both because of the contemptuous connotation and because it was originally coined to mean something much more interesting: a counterpoint to a naive, maximalist sort of positivism, of attempts to dismiss any picture of how the world actually is as unverifiable and therefore the question itself as meaningless. (This is the pop culture impression of Popper, though AFAIU Popper realized the problem and said far more nuanced things than that.) The argument went along the lines of, “if talking about the ‘real world’ is meaningless and science is exclusively about experiments in labs, then it sure is peculiar that those experiments appear to be so remarkably coherent, even with things outside of labs—almost as though there actually is something worth calling the ‘real world’ and that science is in fact about that thing?” Thus, scientism. (Cf. Liberalism Unrelinquished[1] on a similar issue of terminology.) [1] http://liberalismunrelinquished.net/ http://liberalismunrelinquished.net/
  - dr_dshiv 5y ago
    I disagree. Popper introduced the idea of scientism in a manner that comports with how it is used here.

kelseyfrog 5y ago

It's easy to find them. Let us call them out using the siren song. Psychology and sociology are just as much sciences as mathematics, computer science, physics, chemistry, and biology.

somewhereoutth 5y ago

"Engineers! Too dull to be artists, too stupid to be scientists."

_carbyau_ 5y ago
And yet they know the difference between theory and practice.
- webmaven 5y ago
  In theory, there is no difference;in practice there is.

eternityforest 5y ago

I think antifragile theory is needed to really understand anti-intellectualism. Engineers love to convince themselves that older and simpler is always better. So, you might have someone who can solve a differential equation, but seriously looks down on anyone with an Alexa, and thinks we will never be able to transition to all electric cars cleanly with future tech. They are sometimes biased toward their senses much more than numbers. An engineer could totally still say "Metal is always better than cheap plastic crap" and make a power drill with a solid steel case or something. The technical analysis only matters if you actually do it. They can do tech on a personal level but they don't trust the large scale process of technical improvement. The other commenter mentioned disregard for the humanities and I think they are related. "My intelligence is more valuable than your education" is a common belief. People seem to see life and work not as a series of projects, but like a sport, where the goal is to test yourself in a pure way, without "cheating". The humanities often don't have objective success criteria, they are seen as nonessential, and often have lower barrier to entry(Some people can learn to draw from zero in a few weeks, math takes months to years before you can do anything you can't do with an app). These people judge value by amount of challenge. It just doesn't fit the "Living off the land, surviving on your own skill, being practical instead of academic, trusting your eyes not math" kind of paradigm as well.